The plastic problem

Updated: Aug 8, 2018

How big is this problem and why should we care?

Most of us have grown up living with single use plastics and have never given it a second thought. You use it, you throw it away and then you buy another one.. that's just normal right? And that's the problem, it's become such a normal part of life to use and throw away plastic bags, food packaging, drinks bottles, beauty products, disposable razors, straws, coffee cups, toothbrushes, cutlery, takeaway containers...the list goes on and on and on.

So why should we care? We put it in the bin and that's that right?

The scary thing is that there is no away.When that rubbish leaves our house, it disappears from our sight but it has to go somewhere and guess what, every piece of plastic that was ever made still exists somewhere. Even if we put those bottles in the recycling, they can only ever be made into another plastic product and because the quality of plastic is poor, they eventually can't be recycled at all and end up in the same way that every other piece ends up. Most of us can't see it but we are destroying our world with our throwaway plastic and I'm not sure how we're going to answer our children and grandchildren when they ask us the question 'well how come you didn't do anything about it?'.

What would be our answer?

We can no longer say that we didn't know because now most of us have seen blue planet and hundreds of these images of plastic pollution and unfortunately this is actually happening.

Supermarkets are not making this easy for us and they know that we like convenience. However, let's not forget that supermarkets can only function with our money and our money is what dictates what they sell, so here is where lies our power. It is only when we choose to make conscious choices about what we buy from the shops rather than mindlessly buying that we can affect change.

But it ain't easy.. and often we are too tired, too over worked, too stressed, too busy with the kids, too hungry to care. Also, it's really, really hard to change a way of life that we've always known and it's difficult to relate what you buy to another person, animal or the future. I'm very much still learning about all of this and will put any info that I find about how to reduce our single plastic use up here for us.